ABC is already rebranding their afternoon version of Good Morning America with hosts Michael Strahan and Sara Haines just four months after launching in September.
What was known as GMA Day will now be known as Strahan & Sara.
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The program was intended to fill the third hour of GMA — just off by an hour and excluding the morning part. Strahan & Sara took over the spot that The Chew once stood. The cooking show was canceled in Sept. 2018 after 7 successful seasons. Unfortunately, GMA’s new show isn’t even close to the ratings the daytime cooking show brought in which was more than two million viewers, whereas GMA Day swung around 1.7-1.9 million range according to Entertainment Weekly.
The name wasn’t the only change made. The show replaced its producer before Rory Albanese — former executive producer of Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore — took over.
Haines was a former co-host on The View but left for new opportunity. Strahan also left Live! three years ago for a new venture with ABC, but it didn’t come without controversy that he still battles with today; however, he says he wouldn’t have done anything different.
“There’s nothing I would have done differently,” he said. “I handled it as professional as you can handle it and I have been a professional from day one there to the last day I left.”
“I had an opportunity to do something that most people don’t — I got a chance to evolve; to do different, creative things,” he added.
The 46 year old Super Bowl champion hosted alongside Kelly Rippa for four years before moving on. What made the entire process so controversial is that Rippa didn’t find out about it until minutes before it was announced on air.
The shocking announcement rippled friction between the two former friends, so much so, Rippa immediately took time off.
“I really needed a couple of days to gather my thoughts. After 26 years with this company, I earned the right,” she told the audience upon her return. “It started a much greater conversation about communication and consideration and, most importantly, respect in the workplace.”
Strahan admitted that since then, they haven’t spoken in quite some time.
“I learned through all that went down with that, you can’t convince people to like you, “Strahan said. “I haven’t spoken to her in a long time.”
Ben Sherwood — President of the Disney/ABC Televison Group at the time — confessed that there were “mistakes made during the controversy.
“Toward the end of it all, we didn’t really communicate that much,” Strahan admitted. “I kinda looked at it like, ‘It was what it was.’ I come from a business where you have to collaborate. The show was going well? We’re all winning. That’s all that matters to me.”
“The most disappointing thing to me was that I was painted as the bad guy, because I value the way I carry myself… I don’t want people to see me as ‘Oh, he just ran out, just left them there.’ That’s just not true,” he added.
The network does believe his new daytime show will grow, but only time will tell.
Strahan & Sara airs on week days at 1 p.m. ET on ABC.
